I am a volunteer advocate for victims of the Narconon scam. I am a former scientologist. I post anonymously. Mary McConnell is my long time nom de plume. Feel free to contact me for assistance in righting the wrongs.

Search ads for addiction treatment are lucrative. Treatment providers, in some cases, have been willing to pay $70 per ad click, according to an analysis that Mr. Williams’ group conducted and presented to Google executives.

Prices seem to have gone up quite a bit since then, if Mr. Williams' analysis is correct.

Quote from: MICHAEL CORKERY, New York Times

In a series of phone calls and a meeting in Washington, D.C., Mr. Williams presented the company his research. He highlighted that some of the biggest buyers of ad words related to treatment had been accused of misdeeds related to insurance fraud and sexual assault.

Unfortunately, this seems to be only about limiting advertising, and not an attempt to weed out referral sites from the search results. I'm sure that will help some, but the web is littered with deceptive sites (and not only related to drug rehabs). I'd be more impressed if they made a better effort on their search results. I seem to remember google went after affiliate marketers a few years ago, and this referral scam is nothing more than an "in real life" form of that.